Stay Golden
by Cybertronic Purgatory
Summary: Post-game AU in which Angel and Jack survive. As Angel struggles to find her place alongside Lilith and Maya and the rest, she's working hard to earn their trust. (And trying to hide how much she'd like to smooch Maya.) Trying to liberate herself from Jack's grasp isn't the easiest task either, and he's not through with her yet, not by a long shot. Angel/Maya.
1. Chapter 1

It's the end of Pandora and Angel's staring down the barrel of a pistol at her father. Her hands are shaking and she's feeling lightheaded, but the sweat beading on her forehead is cold as ice and the blood in her veins chills like fresh liquid eridium. Jack's looking at her one second and then his eyes fall to her toes, struggling to pull them back up. He's done for, it's written all over the scene – there's going to be a murder tonight on far more than just his empire.

It's the end of Pandora as they tried to make it, and she's fine with that – she turned the tide, switched positions, except her projections came out flawed and the oddness of improbable actions swept her calculations clean.

The vault hunter variable didn't work out in her favor. She got used for longer than she wanted to, for longer than her destiny intended. Tonight's the night it's all going to end, she feels it in her bones.

Just… She doesn't want it to be like this.

She should have died when she wanted to, when she intended to, when her numbers were up. She never counted on the fallibility of her plans – and in retrospect, they all were perfect except that one. It's still hard to say what went wrong but Jack… Jack upset the perfect balance.

And so they're both alive at the crucial moment where everything has turned to crumbs and dust, and she never intended to be here. She didn't want to, she shouldn't be, a thousand "_this wasn't meant to happen_" lingering on the tip of her tongue as she tries to apologize. But her mouth is dry and his is filled with blood. When his lips part, it oozes forth in small bubbles.

His chin stained with blood, it drips down onto his shirt, and he coughs and sputters. The words are done. He's made his speech. They've put the gun in her hands.

Her choices, her wishes, they made sense at the time. "_I want to be be the one who does it_," she said, crawling across the dirty ground, stumbling and flailing her limbs awkwardly. "_I need to be the one_."

Except now the lava churns, they're staring at her with that regretful hesitation and doubt they've eyed her with since they first met face-to-face in the core, where they failed her plans. She swallows. It seems so long ago. The end result is good enough, but the path there…

She tries to breathe but the air is so thick it won't budge around her. She wanted to do this, she reminds herself, gripping the pistol tighter, re-aligning it so that the barrel is pointed right at his forehead. At this distance, even she won't be able to miss.

There's a strange tingling burn inside her. She feels… Done. Used up. Her mind is clear, her thoughts her own, uninterrupted by the frantic ECHOnet of Pandora, and it leaves her empty. The silence alone is deafening.

Whatever the key did to her, it burnt something out, severed connections. It's as good a time as any to end it all.

Squeezing the trigger she averts her face. There are things she can stand – excruciating pain as the needles sink into her flesh, the sound of scalpels cutting through her skin, the burn of eridium lacing itself through flesh and bone and blood – but to see him, bruised and beaten and barely able to stand upright, it's too much. It's what she wanted, but it hurt more than she could have guessed.

As she fires, she thinks she's falling because she's light-headed, because it seems only natural to fall when he does, because she's not feeling the ground under her feet or feeling the heat from around her anymore – and she thinks, _this would be a good place to die. Poetically fit. _Both of them done for at the heart of their obsession. Poetic justice, for what it's worth on Pandora.

Except neither of them die then.

* * *

Lilith stares at the ceiling fan, teeth gritted, fists clenched in the sheets, the howls from the basement growing louder. He's like an unhinged beast, making noise at all hours, but it gets worst during the night when he just won't quit. He screams, he rattles the chains and cage doors, drawing energy from an inexhaustible source to keep them up and writhing in their beds. Of course, the rest have adjusted – they could sleep through a bombardment without flinching, nerves dampened by what Pandora has thrown at them.

She used to be able to, but being weaned off eridium is killing her slowly. She's just a bundle of frayed nerves and volatile urges, and right now, she's consumed with the thought of how nice it'd be to shut that bastard up forever.

She squeezes the pillow over her head, trying to block it out, but he's still there, voice loud and cruel, cutting past any barriers. It's noise she can't block out.

Sure, a promise is a promise, but this is too much even for her. Flopping out of bed she pulls on an oversized t-shirt and enters phasewalk, already picturing the gratifying scene of melting his face with a simple gesture of her hand. It's all in the motion of the wrist, the energies built up and channeled into the middle and index finger. That's all she needs to kill a man – two fingers and a hell of a lot of anger.

She drops out of the phase outside his cell, but all her momentum grinds to a halt when she sees Angel standing in front of the cage door, leaning heavily on it, her back hunched over and arms wrapped around the bars.

"Oh," Lilith says, lowering her hand quickly, trying to steer the killing motion into something more casual. "What are you doing down here?"

"You've _ruined_ her!" Handsome Jack snarls at Lilith from the corner of his cell, but she doesn't pat him any attention.

"Saying hello." Angel looks exhausted, deep circles under her watery eyes, her knees shaking slightly. "He doesn't want to say hello back."

"I don't talk to _traitors_!" His voice bellows, but there's a fracture in it, making his words high-pitched. If Angel looks on the verge of tears, he sounds like it – but hard to tell with that mask of his.

"It's just me."

"This is all your fault!"

"No, I did it intentionally." Angel sighs, turning to Lilith, her expression so cold it makes Lilith shudder in the suffocating summer heat. "You came down here to kill him didn't you?"

"I, uh, well…"

"It's fine. I knew you would. I don't blame you for wanting to, but I still want to be the one in charge of his life and what's left of it. If you don't mind." Her tone doesn't really invite any argument.

"Just make him shut up. Permanently would be preferable."

"I'm working on it."

Lilith touches her forehead, rubbing at the tension spot right above her nose. "Kid, you gotta toughen up."

"I know." And for a little while, Angel doesn't look like the world-weary woman with answers to everything and solutions for all. With her shoulders hunched up and her big blue eyes shimmering, she looks… Well, like a scared girl who has no idea what she's doing. Not anymore.

Lilith pats her on the shoulder, stiff and awkward, and Angel flinches away instinctively. They're never going to be friends and that might be for the better.

Upon leaving, she stops at the top of the stairs, shrugging off all the insults Jack hurls at her without a problem, but she sees the curve of Angel's back increasing. She bends for him, no matter how they try to straighten her up, and Lilith wants to be clever enough to snap her out of it, but… She's more terrified of Angel than she is of anything Jack could ever have done to her.

* * *

Angel stands in front of the bathroom mirror, peeling away the tape covering the bullet wound on her cheek. They pulled the stitches out the other day, but her picking at the scabs keeps upsetting the healing process. She knows it's bad and she keeps doing it without a second thought, standing in front of the mirror with a pair of tweezers and her outgrown sharp fingernails as her only weapons.

When her control over the situation – over Pandora – crumbles by the day, unplugged from the intricate network Jack built, she has to do something to keep herself busy. It's just hard to find something that lasts.

She pauses, stares at her reflection, at the trickle of blood coming from the cheek, and she dabs at it with a cotton swab.

At the end, with Lilith ready to destroy the kneeling bleeding man, Angel asked her to stop. "I want to do it. I deserve to do it." And Lilith handed her a pistol as if it was nothing, waiting, and as Angel weighted it in her hands she stared at her bleeding, muttering father, his eyes half-closed and gaze unfocused, and she _couldn't._

When everything crumbles, they both end up alive in the hands of the resistance. They explain it to her as she wakes up: Angel's powers flared up as she squeezed the trigger – _intense emotions tend to do that to sirens_, Lilith says, Maya shrugging at her side. The pistol was a shitty Hyperion one with electronic micro-chips scattered all throughout it that never were meant to carry an electric current, and she overloaded them all. The projectile went out through the back, hitting the side of her face.

Maya says Jack screamed when Angel sagged to the ground. "_Or he laughed. I think he did. It's hard to tell with that asshole._"

_Back of the pistol. _She frowns at the mirror. All guns are made up out of parts, and if she'd been connected she could have pulled up the right name in a second. But the cords are gone, the connections severed. She can move her head without feeling the plastic fiber-optics graze over her bare shoulder, and that… Hurts.

Her body and mind have shrunk, and she's adrift alone without the network she created to support her. She can't sleep at night, anxious because she can't draw upon the images and sounds that soothed her thoughts.

And her thoughts are her own and that's terrifying. She's small and tiny and who is she, _what is she_–

The bathroom starts spinning and she clutches at the sink, staring at the cracked and stained porcelain. The dirt has lost all its romantic appeal and just disgusts her now. She misses her home, she misses it so, and this freedom is just as appalling as she feared it'd be.

So they took them both back. They dragged them both along, alive. Sort of.

They patched Angel up best they could, but she's still addicted, and getting weaned off a bad habit hurts. And all the while, Jack sits on the dirty floor of a basement cellar, refusing to talk to any of them. Well, any of the vault hunters. When Angel goes downstairs – and she does that all too often, knowing she shouldn't, but she can't do otherwise – he opens his mouth and unleashes it all on her.

She knows she doesn't deserve what he throws at her, objectively, but subjectively she has to come down there and take it and stare at him hoping he'll actually see her. But he's so lost in his anger, his hatred, gone astray in his vision of the world – he sees nothing that doesn't fit in his view, and she's slipping to the periphery.

Coughing, a few blood drops hits the porcelain sink. She supposes it's a small victory that the purple discoloration of her blood isn't as bad as it used to be, but it's not as comforting a fact as it should be to her.

* * *

At breakfast Angel stares at her food trying to remember where she misplaced her appetite, eyes heavy with the dark circles of insomnia. It's been ages since she ate actual home-cooked food, used to synthetic flavoring and liquid diets, and here Brick is putting down plate after plate in front of her, never losing hope that she'll eventually eat something.

"It smells good," she says, trying to show gratitude. "Delicious, even."

"Then why aren't you eating it?" Maya asks, one foot pushed up against the edge of the table as she only pretends to read the book in her hands. By the last count Angel did, Maya's read it four times – and Angel memorized each line she highlighted, each margin scribble noted down during bumpy car rides.

"It's a process." She can't explain it better than that, but forces herself to take a bite of the succulent sausage. The taste alone almost overwhelms her and the icy water stings in her throat as she washes it down.

It's only them in the kitchen – the others are out and about, attending to business of their own. Angel traces Gaige to Moxxi's bar where she's trying to catch up on off-world business now that the Hyperion outgoing information blockade has fallen; Salvador's sleeping off a long string of nights in Scooter's garage. The others are outside of Sanctuary, and beyond her weak reach.

Maya pinches her arm and brings her back to the room, snapping her out of the trance. "Hey. Don't do that."

"I was only checking on what everyone is up to."

"You ask for that kind of information, like everyone else does."

"I… Yes, of course. I apologize." She tries to eat some more, but can't swallow it and discreetly folds it up in a napkin, pushing it under the plate's edge. "So. Uh. How are you?"

"I'm _curious_." Maya puts the bookmark into place and snaps the book shut. "So. What was your plan, really?"

"To smash Jack's empire to smithereens." Angel keeps her gaze even, but can't help the slight smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

"Well, you succeeded, though it took you some time."

"Yes, the hiccups were an annoyance." Thinking back – and it's not long ago, but it feels long enough – she used to be disappointed in them. She even blamed Maya for the failure, that they stood in the core of her immense prison and failed to do the necessary thing. They just injured her, and she got so close to death she felt the slowing of her heart… The shortness of breath… And then she felt Jack's hands forcing her mouth open, forcing liquid eridium down her throat, burning her esophagus. She bit him, and he screamed at her.

She didn't scream back then, but even half-dead in his arms she started plotting again for how to destroy him, for how to crush him completely. And in the dark recesses of her heart, she hated Maya for what she didn't do.

"It was a stupid plan." Maya's annoyance speaks volumes. "It was nothing more than a trap."

"I understand how you can see it that way, but that time, my intentions were genuine."

"That time? And all those other times you tricked us?"

"Maya," Brick growls from the stove, flipping a pancake in the frying pan. "Be nice."

"No, I think we need to ask her these questions. Why are we letting her walk freely around here while we got Jack – her _father_ – locked up? What makes her so trust-worthy?"

"I'm disconnected. There's nothing I can do."

"Excuse me if I don't fully believe that."

"That's your choice. I can't blame you for it."

Maya's lips tighten into a narrow line. She's beautiful, always, but there's something special about her rage that makes Angel want to lean forward, take her chances, and kiss her full on the mouth. It's a terrifying expression gracing her face, but it appeals to Angel – she likes the idea of unrepentant anger. Of the curses that rest on the tip of Maya's tongue.

She likes the risk inherent in desire, as thrilling as it is terrible.

"So…" Maya narrows her eyes. "What would have happened? If things had gone according to plan?" Maya asks, though she doesn't really want to hear the answer, Angel knows as much from the twitch of her eyebrow.

"I was planning to go down on my knees," Angel says without missing a beat. "Have you shoot me, right between the eyes." She idly pushes the food around on the plate, poking and prodding at it, toying with the mashed root vegetables and forming them into round shapes. "I wanted you to perform the execution."

Maya's still for a few seconds, eyes wide and staring at Angel. Then she abruptly pushes the chair out, the shrill scrape accompanying a low muttered curse as she gets up. "I'm not baby-sitting her today," she says to Brick in passing as she exits.

He shrugs his massive shoulders, cleaning up the platters. When he's sure there's just the two of them, he shakes his head. "You're terrible at flirting," Brick says.

"I'm doing my best."

"Well, your best is terrifying, to be honest. You might as well have asked her about her abbey life."

"I was thinking of doing that–"

"I mean, it's a bad idea."

"Oh." She licks her lips, idle hands playing with the loose side-swept hair.

Brick's about to say something but changes his mind, reaches for something on a top shelf, then drops a pistol down on the table. "You up for some shooting practice?"

Angel keeps her arms folded across her chest as she follows him down to the range, each step feeling… Strange. She's still not used to walking, especially on the dusty and dirty ground, but the combat boots Lilith loaned her are too big and chafe against her toes. She avoids looking at anyone they pass, not that many know who she is – though she's seen a few of their faces, projected herself to them when they were potential vault hunters.

Her identity as the woman behind Guardian Angel is a secret they keep, as well as the deposed man raving in the cellar lock-up. She almost wishes they'd just throw them both off the edge of the floating city, but she has those urges so often she doesn't pay them any heed.

Brick gently lines her up in front of the live target, the Hyperion engineer tied to a target pole. Hands over hers, he helps her align the pistol. "You hold it like this, see? Look down the sights."

She smiles a little. "You worry I might shoot myself again."

"Self-sustained gun injuries are the number one killer on Pandora, no point continuing a bad tradition. Now, hold the grip tighter, not so close to your face or you'll knock your front teeth out on the recoil."

"And then I undo the safety?"

"What's a safety?"

"Nevermind." She takes aim, firing without hesitation. The dumb pellets hit until the cylinder has rotated a full circle and the empty click disappoints her.

"Not bad." Brick takes the revolver from her and despite his thick fingers he smoothly refills the cylinder and hands it back to her in less than half a minute. "Again."

"What's the point?" Still, she takes it and shoots, and they repeat it over and over. He adjusts her stance a couple of times, moves her elbows into better positions, nodding each time she hits the target.

When she stumbles and sags, the energy drained out of her, he catches and supports her as she catches her breath and the ringing in her ears quiets down.

"You gotta stop going to see him alone," he says, and she thinks there's concern in his delivery but the last time she heard that genuinely… Well, long ago, before she committed her first murder. Before she got chained to a cold metal throne.

"I don't think any of you understand us." She states it without anger or frustration, just the simple fact as it appears to her. They can try however much they want, but they miss the point too.

"Maybe we don't, but you're torturing yourself."

"I appreciate the input." She hates Jack, but… She can't undo twenty years under his thumb with just a bullet.

"You don't. But you're a good liar."

"I have to be good at something."

He laughs and pounds her on the back so hard she almost sputters out a mouthful of blood on the floor, but with a harsh and bitter swallow she keeps it down. "You'll learn. Everyone does."

* * *

The evening and early night she spends having Zed going over her back, pulling at loose wires hanging from her mauled body. The nerves near her spine have been dead for years, blunted with all the implants grafted onto spine and ribs. She sighs as Zed fumbles with his knife, missing the deft touch of the Hyperion surgeons. He's bound to botch her up worse than she's ever been in her entire life, but she dutifully goes there.

On the way back to the headquarters, she stops and spits out blood into an alley. She studies the flecks on the smooth wall and wonders how much stock she should put into it. More than she is, probably.

She slips into the basement unnoticed, but as she's about to close the door she catches a glimpse of blue hair.

"Where is she?" Maya asks.

"At Zed's," Lilith replies. They're talking at the foot of the stairs – perfect view of the entrance, no doubt.

A part of Angel knows the polite and proper thing would be to shut the door and not listen, but she flattens herself against the wall. Old habits break hard. Old ways of living take a long time to shake off.

"Good. I can't stand being near her." Maya sounds almost upset.

"Okay, what's going on?"

"Nothing."

"You were the one who defended her right to speak after she betrayed Sanctuary. You were the one who refused to shoot her when we had the chance – and you were the one who could have! You were the one who carried her out of the vault, and now you can't stand being near her?"

"It's complicated. And she's… Scary."

"I… Know what you mean. She scares the shit out of me. But now we have her, and what do you want to do about it?"

"Can't we just… Not… Have her?"

"Are you suggesting we kill her?" Lilith's voice rises in pitch. "She may have been our enemy but she's a siren! You just can't do that to one of us. We're like, sisters, or something…"

There's a rattle from the bars and she quickly closes the gap in the door, peeling herself away reluctantly. Down the stairs she finds Jack already glaring at her, the food tray at his feet untouched.

She squats down in front of it, sighing. "You have to eat."

"They're poisoning it," he says defiantly.

"They're not."

"How are you so sure? They want us both dead!"

"Only you."

He doesn't absorb what she's saying, as usual. "They're talking about how much they dislike you. They'll never understand you, never treat you right."

"You didn't either." She digs around in his food with a plastic spork, gathering up a little of each before bringing it to her mouth and eats it. "See," she says, finishing the mouthful with a loud gulp. "Nothing dangerous."

"That's not the point," he argues, desperation tinging his voice again. She notes how dirty his clothes are, the smudges on his mask and the tousled hair. "How can you be so complacent with this? They're bandits. They're trying to get into your head and twist you around…" He grasps her wrist, hard and tight, hurting her. "You could break me out of here!"

"I won't."

"What have they done to you? My precious girl, you're still in there, they've just brain-washed you. I can bring you back, I can make you right again, just get me out of this hole."

"Dad… I'm the same girl you made me into." _And you're the same man you made yourself into_, words she can't say, just yet. It's always been difficult talking back to him, arguing with him, instinctual pain conditioned into her. He just has to glare at her and she feels the need to flinch, but drawing on the little strength she has, she stands firm against him.

He lets go of her wrist with a sneer. "There's nothing here that will save you. You're going to die in this dirty, disgusting pit, and you're going to die because you're too proud to listen to me. You're weak, Angel. You're pitiful."

She's about to argue back but her lungs seize up and she starts coughing, forehead against the bars as she tries to steady herself. To her surprise, he cups her cheeks, his long fingers cool against her burning temples.

"You're really going to die here," he says, pitying her.

"So are you." She takes his hands, missing them as she does – against her better judgement, against her better will – and stands up, pulling her coat tighter around her shuddering torso. "Goodnight, sir."

"Angel… Come back to me… Come back to me!" He pleads, he demands, as he's always done with her. "Sweetheart!" He tries to control her, but this time, she's the one who can walk away, and he's the one chained in place. It's not exactly freedom, but a step in the right way.

* * *

A teary-eyed Angel emerges from the basement, too busy pretending she's not crying to give Maya more than a cursory glance. Maya watches as she pulls herself up the stairs with all her might, hears the bathroom door shut and lock.

She's up on her feet instantly, light-footed as she slips downstairs. Jack's leaning against the wall, head thrown back, the column of his throat illuminated by the slivers of light filtering through the blackened window slits.

"What did you say to her?" she demands, holding up a glowing fist. "What did you do?"

He laughs, slowly, Adam's apple bobbing. "Why do you care?"

"Answer me!" The blue tendrils of energy around her hand swirl up, vicious and bright.

"Only the truth." He pushes himself off the wall, teeth glinting in the dim room. "What you say behind her back. What you really think of her." He grins wickedly. "Not that she needs to hear it from me when you're willing to talk about it so loudly."

Maya seethes, fist raised – she really wants to punch him, really wants to reach into his head and destroy him – but she holds back, barely.

"She scares you. Good. You should be scared of her. Her powers… If there's no one controlling them, she will destroy. She will kill."

"You're full of crap."

"Am I? You heard the logs, didn't you? Do you think she's ever been in control of herself? No, I was the only thing holding her back. She's dangerous, murderous… And you're not sleeping with one eye open, are you?" His voice lowers to an insidious whisper. "You made a huge mistake trusting her."

"Your lies aren't working, so cut it out." Reluctantly, she lets go of the energy in the palm of her hand.

"I know what you want, Maya." He drags out the vowels of her name, letting them drip off his tongue. "Answers, about sirens, about what you are. About what purpose your powers fill. There's more to you than just being a vault hunter, isn't there?"

"Why should I believe you?"

"It's my word against Angel's, isn't it? And which one of us has lied to you the most?"

Maya narrows her eyes. "Whatever you're trying here, it's not going to work."

He laughs as she leaves – there's nothing brittle about it, not like when Angel's been talking to him – there's confidence in that laughter. Certainty. Maya never trusted either but she at least thought he was broken enough to not worry about. Now… Now she's not sure of either.


	2. Chapter 2

Maya sits down on the top step of the basement stairs, careful not to make a noise. Below, she can hear Handsome Jack ranting and raving at Angel, cursing her name and rattling the chains around his wrists.

"You betrayed me! Sold me out! And what's it gotten you in return?" He lowers his voice, trying for a sweet and caring intonation, reminiscent of how brother Sophis used to talk to Maya when she wanted more than he desired to give her. "Huh? They're starving you! Little by little, you're wasting away, and they're sipping drinks and laughing at you behind your back. They know you for the fool you are."

"I'm the most intelligent person on Pandora, dad."

"But you don't know _people_, Angel. You never did."

It's the same, every night. He uses everything he's got, trying his hardest to make Angel cry, to force her viewpoint until she renounces the vault hunters. And each night, Maya hears the strain in Angel's breathing, hears the triumphant childish joy making Jack's voice rise – and that's the point where Angel leaves. She's not sure who Angel is toying with, but it's making Maya sleepless.

"Hey!" Jack slams his hands against the iron bars which rattle loudly. "Don't you turn your back on me! Don't you do this again, you'll be dead to me, you hear? _Dead!_"

Angel ascends the stairs slowly, weak hand clinging to the support as she pulls herself up. "Don't," Angel wheezes, leaning heavily against the cold concrete wall as she stops briefly by Maya's side, catching her breath.

"He doesn't know you."

"I said, '_don't_'."

"I don't know you either. These games…" Maya rises, brushing off her pants. "They're going to get on someone's nerves."

Angel smiles. "Is that a threat?"

"A fact." Maya stares Angel in the eye for as long as she dares, but there's something unnerving about the younger woman that makes her skin crawl in ways she doesn't know what to make of.

As Angel ushers her out of the basement, Maya decides she's going to push the stale-mate into action.

* * *

Angel swivels in the chair, pushing it around with her blackened toes. Zed keeps saying how she should have them cut off, but being limited to her own body, she feels a great attachment to them… Or rather, having lost her ability to travel through the Pandora infosphere, to trip along the intricate webs of the ECHOnet, she has grown attached to what she has. And looking at the charred skin of her feet and the stumpy fingers with chewed-up cuticles, she hates to admit it isn't much.

So she swivels in her chair, glaring at her mirror image. Brick stands behind her, combing through her hair. The ends, last cut by a scientist for convenience's sake, hang jagged and disproportionate, and the tufts of hair growing out around the implants look awkward to say the least.

"What'chu want?" he says cheerfully. His idea and his burden – he's got two sirens going through eridium withdrawal to watch, and he's decided to have a beauty day, of all things.

_Eridium. Liquid. Dripping into my mouth. A bathtub of it, so I can soak it. Eridium eridium eridium_. "Something." She shrugs.

He's already filed Lilith's nails down to the skin so she can't claw at her tattoos, but in the corner, when he's not looking, she's gnawing on her skin like an animal. Angel watches in the mirror and she feels the same urge, the same ridiculous thoughts passing through her head at times – if she can just carve out the marks, denounce her abilities, she'll be free. If she can just scratch hard enough she'll make it through the day and feel better at the end of it.

"Shorter?" He holds up the split ends between his thick fingers, studying them. "Definitely shorter."

"Do what you want." She doesn't care. She's tired of being babysat alongside Lilith every day, Lilith who's sneaking eridium from anywhere she can, trying to prolong the shakes and shivers and gnawing at her stomach. It's still going to kill her.

She wants to turn around and say, _we're going to die together. They should bury us together, a monument to the price we pay for what we are_. She wants to look Lilith deep in her fiery eyes and tell her how death is going to be nothing and how it's going to swallow them both in its gaping maw. She wants to break her, just a little, or a whole lot.

Boredom's destroying her more than anything else.

She leans back as Brick combs through her hair, parting and pinning up sections, the freshly sharpened razor slicing through the frayed tips, the matted lengths falling to the floor around her. He works while humming a tune, only pausing to glance at Lilith once in a while. As he puts the razor to clean up the jagged stubble around her implant ports, a loud and clear gunshot rings out from downstairs.

"What was that?" Angel asks, jerking forward so suddenly Brick cuts her scalp.

"It came from the basement," Lilith says, a string of saliva dangling between her arm and lip, fresh red bite-marks on her skin.

"Where's Maya?" Angel asks, her eyelids fluttering as she touches at the portable communicator she has at the hip. "No, no no no…" She stumbles out of the seat and crashes down the stairs, something wild and cold burning in her eyes.

* * *

"How could you do this?" Angel's voice is devoid of warmth, of care, slicing like a cruel knife. She holds Jack's face together, his blood spilling over her hands as he clutches at her desperately, sputtering and coughing.

"Because he doesn't deserve to live!" Maya stares at the Jacobs revolver in her hands and throws it into the corner. She only had one bullet in it anyway. She didn't think she'd hit. She didn't think he'd goad her far enough for her to actually do it.

Did she even think it through at all? (Of course. A part of her is even pleased, however terrible Angel appears to her in the present moment, she's pleased that her bullet went through his mouth and brought out so much blood.)

He smiled when she shot him. _Do whatever you want, siren. You're just going to give me my daughter back._

"He's mine. My choice. My murder to commit." Angel glares at Maya. "And now you're taking that away from me too."

"I'm not… Angel! He's ruining your life and you're letting him. You're better off with him dead."

"That's not _your_ choice."

"For…" Maya punches the wall so hard she cracks her knuckles and screams out loud. "Why won't you let him go?"

"Get out, Maya. Get out."

"This isn't your home. You can't order me around!"

"So you do still think I'm a prisoner?" Angel lets go of her father and blood gushes forth in a torrent. "Then do it already. Lock me up with him. Starve me to death. Let me die with him. _Put me in shackles and be done with it_."

Maya covers her face, breathing hard, her voice taking on a sharp edge. "Don't, please."

"It's good to see your true self, Maya. It's good to know who you really are. For a moment, I thought you were someone worth something."

Maya's hands fall to her side, and she simply stands there, staring silently at Angel's hands. Angel ignores her presence, pressing tightly against her father's face, trying to keep the shredded pieces together as she waits for doctor Zed to come and patch him up.

If Maya didn't know better, if Maya hadn't aimed straight at his mouth hoping to wipe that terrible smirk of his face, she'd be certain Jack's smiling at her.

* * *

Angel's vengeance comes swift and cruel, leaving no doubt about how she feels.

"I think Angel's trying to kill me," Maya says as she slumps over the table, dark circles heavy under her eyes. She hasn't slept, a dark and churning sensation tearing at her insides for days on end now – and traps staged in her path wherever she goes. Near-lethal, enough to push Maya to the brink and haver her dangle over it, but never enough to outright kill her – as long as she steps carefully and navigates gently.

The mental strain, however, has begun to make her slip up.

"You think?" Brick picks up one of her guns, a Maliwan SMG she's been carrying around for months, and with careful angling fires a round. It goes out through the back, hitting right where she'd have it aligned against her chest. "She definitely is."

"Fuck." Maya sags further, covering her head with her arms. "I fucked up."

"You did something we've all been thinking of," Lilith says, not very comforting. Feet up on the table, she prods Maya with the toe of her boot. "Hey. You know she won't actually kill you."

"Are you sure?" Maya mutters against the wooden surface.

Lilith looks at the sizzling gun in Brick's hand that's slowly decaying from the corrosive rounds melting inside it. "She's… Just confused? And angry?"

"She's a murderous little one." Brick throws the gun into a corner where it continues sizzling.

Maya curls her arms over her head, pushing herself against the hard surface. "I fucked up bad."

Brick's heavy hand lands on her back with such force that Maya suspects he cracked a rib of hers. "Don't worry, slab. She won't get you."

"Yeah." Lilith's burning hot hand rubs at Maya's shoulder. "If it comes down to between her and you, I'd be up for melting her brain in an instant."

* * *

Moxxi ignores Angel as she sits down by the bar, prompting Angel to roll her eyes as she turns to scan the cramped, sweaty establishment that only marginally manages to smell more of smoke than piss, scanning the premises for a man she can sway enough to buy her a beer.

No one meets her eye. She smiles bitterly, turning around to come face-to-face with Moxxi.

"You're not getting served here, sugar," Moxxi says tensely, her plump lips pressed tight together.

"You dated Jack for months," Angel replies, "and you never even cared about me."

"I didn't know."

"I left signs out. You chose not to see." She didn't, but the way Moxxi's expression contorts in pain eases Angel's frustration a little as she slips off the bar stool and leaves.

The shoulders have all turned cold in Sanctuary, one by one, and Angel knows it's because of her campaign against Maya – but she's too far gone into it to care. Her view of everything has narrowed in focus to see only Maya and all the ways in which she loves and loathes her.

It's hard not to love other sirens. They're not sisters, like Lilith sometimes say, and they're not automatically friends or enemies. They're just sirens. Each of them an isolated island, doomed to die alone nowhere near the full realization of their potentials, because that's how cruel life is.

And she loves them all, all the ones she's seen, because they carry the heavy weight of dark futures with the snarling and wild grace of an animal fighting until they're torn apart.

She kicks a wall and feels nothing, the majority of nerves in her feet dead by now.

She's such a fucking burn-out, as her dad would say. Literally.

Except her dad has no tongue anymore because Maya's bullet shredded it to nothing and he's wheezing in a dirty operating room, strapped down with a dozen tubes and IV lines strung to his body. It's almost satisfying to go and stare at him, but each minute she spends sitting there watching his chest rise in fitful bursts, she gets angrier and angrier. Angry that it wasn't her bullet. Angry that she didn't pull the trigger.

There's only one person she can turn her fury onto, and she does so with all the force she has left. However weak she has grown, however much of her former strength has atrophied away, what still lingers gets put to use.

A small explosion comes from the Crimson Raiders headquarters as she turns down the street, and Maya's scream bounces out from the open windows. She smiles broadly – seems Maya triggered the re-wiring she's done of the archaic computer systems – but this time, something doesn't go according to plan.

A flash of purple appears in front of Angel and then she's tugged through to another side.

It's the first time she's phased by Lilith and the strange feeling in her stomach makes her fingers tingle, her head buzz, it's something she wants more of – the sensation of another siren's powers engulfing her is head-dizzying delicious. They drop out on the second floor of the headquarters, the world coming back to Angel in a vivid bright haze. Air comes back too, filling her lungs, and she gasps desperately for it. How Lilith can hold her breath for so long in that other dimension is beyond her.

"That's it!" Lilith says loudly, her hair in wild disarray, her stale breath hitting against Angel's face. She wonders if she smells as terrible.

Lilith finds Maya in the kitchen, sleep-deprived and jittery, but she doesn't flinch when she sees Angel, drawing upon what strength she has to remain rigid as steel.

Angel admires her, Angel hates her. It's hard to tell where one feeling ends and the other begins.

"I'm done with you two being like this! Apologize! I'm not having two grown women sulking like puppies in here!"

Angel meets Maya's eyes, but neither make a move to open their mouths. It's oddly pleasing to Angel – she's missed stubborn silences, missed the tension of a fight lingering on for days on end.

Lilith grumbles. "Nothing? No words? You're not even going to try, are you?"

"She tried to kill my dad."

"She's trying to kill me," Maya spits back – even though her body reads as nervous and tense, there's still that ever-present anger, the silent fury simmering under the surface, her tongue sharpened by defiance and twenty-seven years of obedience.

Angel adores her and envies her and Angel thinks a whole lot about Maya, but most of all she wants Maya to pay for what she tried to take from her. Or… She tries to cling to that feeling, staring hard at the tips of that blue hair she's thought of running her fingers through. Of pulling on, tugging, getting her fingers caught in.

It's hard. Maya muddles any clarity anger used to give Angel.

Lilith's head snaps between the two, her chest rising more and more. "You two need to work it out on your own. And you're going to have to do it outside of Sanctuary."

"What?" Maya protests.

"You heard me. And don't you dare use the fast travel network to get back. Don't even think about it."

"How am I meant to survive?" Angel asks, exhaustion in her voice.

"Do you think anyone cares?"

"I…" It never struck her that they'd actually want her dead. Jack threatened, of course, but he'd never act on it, because she remained useful and she remained his daughter, but… Of course they don't care. She's not useful to them. More than anything, she's a drain on their resources.

She never understood what burning bridges meant until these idiots came into her life, and ever since, that's all she's done with them, over and over.

Only this is the first time she feels a tinge of regret over it.

At the door, the other vault hunters stand, crowding together trying to look as innocent as possibly. They all meet her gaze at first, hard and determined, but they all end up yielding – Axton, Salvador, Gaige. Krieg, who usually always stares at her, averts his face. It's hard to tell with Zer0, but… None of them wants to look at her directly after a while.

"Et tu, Brick?" Angel says with a sad smile, having saved him for last.

He scratches at his neck. "I don't know what you're talking about," but Angel knows he's smarter than that. It's just easier to play stupid sometimes.

"Enough goodbyes," Lilith growls, taking Maya by one arm and Angel by the other. This time Angel closes her eyes and when she opens them again, she's standing knee-deep in snow.

Maya sighs at her side. "For fuck's sake, Lilith,_ a mountain?_"

* * *

Angel glares at Maya sullenly, pulling a ragged blanket around her shoulders that Maya found in an abandoned ramshackle cabin they passed traversing down the mountain side. Angel's wearing Maya's socks, three sizes too big, the toes flopping helplessly – Maya threw them at her after she noticed the bare blackened feet in the dim moonlight. Maya's teeth have been chattering for an hour now, but the snow starts thinning out around them.

Angel pauses, her mouth opening for the first time during their mountain journey. "A Catch-A-Ride down there." Then she turns sharply to Maya. "You can leave me here."

"What?" Maya's frustration makes her snarl.

"Leave me. That's what you want." She plops down on the snowy ground, letting out a small whimper.

"Don't presume to know what I want." Maya trudges back up and grabs Angel by the wrist, dragging her to her feet. "Now come on."

Digging her heels into the ground, Angel leans back enough to counter Maya's momentum, but when she slips they both go tumbling down. Their backs hit against the rocky slope as they slip and slide a good ten meters, only coming to a stop when they hit against a solid boulder in their path.

Maya hears something break and she sags down on top of Angel who's landed in her lap. "Are you happy now?" Maya asks, feeling the stinging contusions groan in protest as she pushes the younger woman off her.

"No," Angel says, then louder when she rolls over onto her back and a loud plastic crack follows, "this is _your_ fault!"

"Okay." Maya whirls around. "Fine. It is my fault. And you know what? I'm okay with that! If I got to do it all over again, I'd still shoot him. You didn't know, what it was like, all those months of his voice, of his mocking, of the things he did…"

"Try years."

"I know!" Maya licks her lips, hands at her hips. "I know, I know, _I know_. And I'm being insensitive and I'm fucking up again and I'm sorry, Angel. I really want to kill your dad because he gets under my skin, he just… He's toxic."

Angel's shaking visibly, but Maya can't tell if it's from anger or exhaustion or a chill. She doesn't respond, and Maya keeps going down the muddy hill but slips, the soft grass giving way, and she tumbles down a few good meters before clawing herself to a stop. She's dirty and wet and glares up at Angel, who's actually smirking at her misery.

"Why won't you just kill him?" Maya screams. "You begged me to kill him, once, _you begged me_. What's changed? What's the difference?"

"Because then it's just going to be me! All the pain, all the fault, it's going to be all on me!" She runs her hands through her hair, more distraught than angry now. "Everything I've ever done, all these terrible things, not all of them are his. When he's dead, you're going to realize he's not the only toxic one. He and I, we ruin everything we touch, and that's… That's all we do."

Maya deflates as suddenly as she burst out. "You… You can't think that about yourself." She tries her best to imitate Brick but Angel only sneers.

"It's the truth. He hurt me, and I, very knowingly, hurt him back. I hurt you because I wanted to see you squirm. If you were an insect, I'd have pulled your wings off." She laughs, cruel and sharp and edging close to something wild and dangerous. "For a while, you were an insect. All of you were! I could pry and tear and make you scream and it didn't bother me."

"But it does bother you now."

"And it's so stupid and inconvenient! Why should it? I'm dying! I won't be here long enough to care what happens later!" Angel stops, wheezing, and sags down onto the ground.

Maya climbs back up, mud clots in her hands and on her knees, and picks up Angel – she weighs so little, like she's a hollow copy of a human – and takes the long way down the hill. Angel's head rests against her breast, wisps of hair tickling her skin. She looks so harmless and tiny and sad, the sunken skin around her eyes still discolored in blue-black shades.

"Hey… Do you still bleed purple?"

She doesn't open her eyes, muttering a reply against the swell of Maya's breast. "A little, yes."

Maya curses under her breath, putting Angel down on the asphalt by the Catch-a-Ride station as she thumbs through the digistruct choices. Her preferences lean towards big technicals with metallic finish, but before she's even found her combo Angel puts her fingertips to the side of the computer. It buzzes but instantly begins constructing the car.

"Truce?" Maya asks as she leans down over Angel again, extending a hand in a helpful offer.

Angel takes her hand, their cold and callous fingers brushing. "For now."

"We can talk it over when we're not freezing our asses off." Maya pulls her up and guides her into the passenger seat.

* * *

If Angel keeps her eyes on the road ahead, she gets motion sickness. If she rolls her head back, the night sky only shows her the Hyperion station against the illuminated moon. Neither state one she desires, so she shifts in the big leather seat, turning towards Maya. Maya's hands are high on the steering wheel, her brow furrowed deep in thought as she scans the road ahead, avoiding the wide cracks hitting the booster to jump over any gaps.

"You love driving," Angel notes.

"It's terrifying."

"And that's why you like it. I've watched you, and you love how much Pandora thrills you." They hit a bump in the road and Angel lurches forward in the seat, steadying her hands against the dashboard. "You drive terribly, though."

Maya gives her a quick and short glare, changing the subject abruptly. "You never said you were dying."

"Isn't it obvious?" She pulls the blanket up to her chin, pressing her knees close to her chest. "Did you think I'd actually survive?"

"I…"

"You did." Angel closes her eyes. "That's kind of sweet and mostly idiotic."

"It's optimistic."

"Which isn't a realistic thing to be." She stretches her neck. "Right here. Down into the valley."

They drive on in silence, Maya taking the turn so hard Angel pales a bit and swallows hard several times, her eyelids fluttering. "Why…" She coughs, tries again. "Why won't you take eridium?"

"That's an idiotic question."

"I know, but Brick told me to talk to you. Directly. Instead of assuming."

"Whatever your assumptions are, they're correct."

"If it was my choice, I wouldn't quit. The power, the limits dissolving one by one… You can't even begin to imagine."

"I've known different kinds of power."

"Being a false goddess doesn't begin to compare to what Pandora can do to you."

Maya slows the car down to a crawl as they hit a muddy riverbank. "Lilith's so addicted she can't even think clearly before she's stolen eridium from one of us. She used to ask, but now she's too ashamed to admit she still needs it, and tries to hide her hunger."

"She doesn't want to disappoint you all."

"We're not disappointed. We'd never be. But she's too determined to not take our help."

Angel shifts in the seat, looking out over the side of the car. "What help can you actually give a siren about to die?"

"They turned on you because of what you were trying to do to me." Maya sighs, picking up on the truth of the matter immediately. "Why do you hate me?"

"I don't. I never did."

"Bullshit. You wanted me to kill you, that time in the core. All of this fighting between us. Don't tell me this is your screwed-up way of showing me affection."

Angel doesn't reply, words thick in her throat. Maya starts giggling, loud and ungracious, her snorts making Angel's heart ache.

* * *

A screen flickers to life as they materialize in a sealed pressure room. Maya presses herself against the wall while Angel touches both hands to the glass, angling her eye to meet a camera. The screen flashes green, followed by a short message. _Welcome, Specimen A. Clearance Alpha, clearance Omega_.

"Specimen?"

"Official designation in the Hyperion files. Jack liked doing that to me." Angel clears her throat. "Initiate sequence Omega, password: six four, dash six." The screen reads _Secondary Password_. Angel grimaces. "I love you."

Maya shivers involuntarily, remembering when she spoke the same words with Jack's voice modulator to unlock the gates to Angel's prison. Then she makes a note to never say it to Angel, and immediately wonders why she'd even care to think about that. (She knows why, though, and she feels like laughing at herself again.) "What'll we find here?"

"Nothing of value. But I… I have to see it."

The doors open with a low hiss, revealing an empty corridor, lined with boxes and papers, glass vials broken and intact. Maya bends down to pick up a handful of employee ID cards, flipping through them as she trails behind Angel. They pass by empty labs and offices, not all of them left in a haste – some barely look like they've been used at all, others neatly picked through before departure. Others like someone was there just a minute ago.

"Are there any employees left?"

"No. I killed them all."

"What?"

"Sequence Omega. Jack was paranoid, and had fifty different ways to eliminate all the staff in the turn of a hand. They all had chips implanted into them, chips I could overload in a microsecond, fry all their nerves dead." Angel drags her hand along the dirty windows. "I don't know how to shoot a man, but I knew how to sunder their minds."

"You scare me."

"Good."

In a fleeting second, Maya sees a flicker of light, of white wings spreading to fill up the entire width of the corridor… And then the moment passes, Maya rubs at her eyes. She doesn't remember when she last slept, it's just her imagination playing tricks on her.

They move deeper into the station, and they start finding bodies. All of them look like they just laid down to sleep on the floor, resting peacefully except for the small detail that they're not breathing, that their skins are slowly losing that living luster. Neither of them cares, but the claustrophobic environment starts getting to Maya. She's used to the open sky, to wide-stretched plains – even in the abbey on Athenas, which was built in that ancient style, rooms opening up to courtyards without rooftops and with the native flora crawling all over. Being in enclosed environments – especially in space – makes sweat bead on the back of her neck.

"Where are we going?" Maya asks, trying not to sound stressed.

"There's an anomaly up here," Angel replies, hand against the wall, electric sparks jumping between her fingers and the white plastic.

"Anomaly?"

"This entire station is wired for me to travel through it when phaseshifting. But there's this big, empty space ahead."

"An empty room?"

"No. A room I can't phaseshift into. I want to investigate."

Another pair of heavy airlock doors opened to let them through, and the corridor tapered off to a single lonesome door. Angel hurries her step and flings the door open, frozen on the threshold.

Peeking over her shoulder, Maya sees something she's only ever known in films, described in novels she read – a bedroom, decorated with faded things and posters and a bed with a ruffled duster.

"He… He brought my room here." Angel steps inside, hesitant, mouth agape.

Maya touches the faded purple covers of the bed, sitting down on it – the springs groan, the soft mattress dipping low. She leans back and studies the wallpaper, faded yellow with dark golden flowers on it. The pillows smell old and stale, but there's a vague hint of teenage skin there, of synthetic perfumes and artificial bubblegum.

It's something Maya never had. She slept in lavish quarters as long as she knew, everything old and carved, creaking when she moved. The only decorations she had were in gold and all the fabrics were heavy brocades. With Angel's back turned, Maya discreetly buries her nose into the sheets and draws in a deep breath. Nothing smells of clinical procedures or sterilizing alcohol, and yet… It's so very Angel.

"He never let me come here. I mean, I saw this station, I was in it while phaseshifting through the networks, but this…" Turning, Angel puts her hands against the wall, feeling the smooth wallpaper with a floral pattern. "There's nothing electronic in here. Why did he do this?"

"He couldn't let go."

Angel swallows, hands grabbing at things, fingers clenching around small porcelain figurines and letting go, moving on to the next childhood trinket with an expression on her face that says she'd rather have forgotten everything in here. "Why?"

"Maybe he thought that one day, you'd just revert back to who you were. And you'd be his little girl again."

"All he had to do was exercise the demon in my blood. For all he did, he never understood my powers. Never tried to. He rationalized me to be a computer program, only talking to me through screens and microphones. This…" Angel sweeps her hand along the shelf, sending all the figurines flying onto the floor where they shatter into dusty pieces. "I haven't been this little girl in years."

"He couldn't let go." Maya repeats herself, at a loss for words.

Lower lip trembling, Angel falls onto the bed, her back shaking. "Why won't you just say it?"

"What?" Maya sits up, cautiously touching one hand to Angel's wrist.

"He and I deserved each other."

"Is that what you think?" Maya cups her face. "You deserved so much more and so much better than him. That's what I believe."

Angel jolts forward, pressing her lips to Maya's. She's not sure how to kiss but she tries, pushing herself closer, lips parting, tongue sliding into Maya's mouth. Then she's out of air and withdraws suddenly, gasping, eyes wide open.

Maya blinks once, twice, then her hand is at the back of Angel's neck pulling her close for another, deeper one.

"Don't say nice things if you don't mean them," Angel says when she breaks away, whispering it against Maya's mouth.

"I like you." Maya falls back onto the bed, dragging Angel along with her. "Come here." Their legs intertwine, lips meeting over and over, Maya's arms folded around Angel's tiny frame while Angel clings to Maya's neck.

As they kiss, Angel starts crying, and Maya kisses the tears, licks up them from her cheeks, then kisses Angel full on the mouth again. She repeats it over and over until Angel's sobbing quiets down, until Angel pushes her face against the nook between shoulder and neck on Maya, her hot breath and salty tears making Maya's skin tingle. Still, she holds on, stroking Angel's hair, kissing her forehead, until she too falls asleep.

* * *

When Angel wakes up and disentangles herself from Maya, her body stiff and sore. One hand clamped over her mouth, she sneaks out and closes the door before she starts dry-heaving and coughing – a part of her morning routine ever since being taken to Sanctuary.

When her throat stops convulsing, she gets up and makes her way to the central control chamber. By the time she gets there, the cameras show Maya in the white corridor, and Angel resists the urge to plug herself into the station's mainframe – she'd be unable to let go this time – and instead lights up a path that'll lead Maya to her. Meanwhile, she sits down in the chair Jack used to occupy and adjusts the settings to be comfortable to her frame. There's junk food bags scattered all over the floor, crumbs stuck to the bottoms of her feet, greasy stains on the keyboards and salt between the keys.

"Hey," Maya says, leaning on the back of the seat as she studies the screens – some dead, others filled with old footage, but a good half of them all show live-feeds from different parts of Pandora. "I trashed your room a little."

"Thank you," Angel says, feeling suddenly relieved.

"No problem. It creeped me out anyway." She yawns. "So, what now?"

"What I came to see."

All the screens shift, becoming recordings of Jack – some intentional, of him addressing the camera, smiling to it, others more candid. Jack alone in a bathroom, pulling off his mask and shaving; of Jack throwing a violent tantrum before shooting a man and laughing; Jack in Angel's core, plugging the cords in one by one as she shudders and claws at his arms. Then they get older, go back further – as far back as Angel started recording and filing things away onto whatever memory she could find, saving them for purposes she never understood then. Even now, they seem so useless – prepubescent Angel with her dad at a restaurant, his sharp and cruel smile as she pokes around in the food without eating, their mother hiding her face in shame.

"He wasn't always Jack, was he?" Maya asks, uncertain.

Angel's lips tighten. "He used to be John, but Jack? Jack was always there. He just wanted to reinvent himself, become someone new. Become the man he thought he deserved to be. I delivered him unto himself."

"And you?"

Angel simply touches the screen, bringing up another archive of recordings. "I filed them all away onto his computer. All the horrible things he said, all the cruelty he inflicted, I never let him forget. I wanted it to drive him over the edge. I made him watch all of this, over and over, whenever I could." She deletes all the recordings at once. "I created Handsome Jack. He had a template, a bad one scratched on the back of a napkin from his dive bar, and I refined it with cruelty, twisting the knife."

"But you also destroyed him."

"Does that absolve my sins?"

"I don't believe in sins. I don't believe in gods."

Angel snorts ungraciously. "There are no gods on Pandora, only goddesses."

* * *

It's hard to tell time on the space station, but Angel, after having gone through all the files and documents her father kept, having tallied all the resources still available, all the eridium in stores across Pandora – refined and raw alike – she goes back to her room and finds Maya on the bed, reading one of her teen romance novels. On the cover there's two girls holding hands behind their backs, their thighs pressed together, dirt and scars covering their intertwined fingers.

Everything but the bed in the room's been torn and broken, something she finds fitting.

"Productive day?" Maya asks, glancing up above the pages.

Angel nods, pausing. "I could live here."

Maya closes the book, putting it down on her chest. "Do you want to?"

"I… I'd like to live. There's enough equipment here to keep me alive. It's sterile, clean, the medical bay outfitted with robots and…" She glances at Maya. "You don't think it's worthwhile."

"I'd rather watch this place burn. It feels tainted."

"Purity is a luxury we can't afford to strive for."

Maya shrugs, looking uncomfortable. "If this is what you want, then… Take it."

"I should take you back to Sanctuary before anything else though." Angel extends her hand, the other on a small teleportation device strapped to her thigh.

"You mean you've forgiven me?" Maya takes her hand, and in the next instant, they're standing on the hard floor of the fast-travel station, reeking of everything that Sanctuary contains, amplified by the hot sun hanging directly above them.

Lilith appears in a flash of purple, her hair wet and smoothed back, clothes haphazardly thrown on in a hurry, her eyes narrowed. "So. Did you two make up?"

"Yeah," they say in unison, still holding hands. Guiltily, Angel lets go and Maya coughs, strapping the novel to her belt, cover turned to her hip.

Lilith eyes them, then nods, accepting their word. "Come on. You look like you need a shower."

* * *

That night, they all eat dinner together, everyone crowding around a table as Brick carries in pots and pans that make the wood creak under the combined weight. Maya sits on one side of Angel with Brick on the other, his massive arms constantly bumping into her as he plops more food onto everyone's plates, and whenever he laughs it spreads to Angel who tries to hide her smiles behind a napkin.

And once in a while, Maya reaches under the table and puts a hand on her leg, squeezing gently.

It's strange, and she still doesn't think they see in any value in her. It's hard to enjoy the warm exuberance of being amongst them, and she keeps silent.

After desert, it's just the three sirens left at the table, Brick coming in now and again to pick up another set of plates or pots to wash. Maya keeps eating at the cake with a spoon.

Lilith loosens the top button on her tight jeans and stretches out. "Jack's worse off," she says, trying to pass it off conversationally, but Angel sees the light shimmering in the hands folded behind her head.

Angel pauses, fingertips skimming the table. Just a few days ago, she may have leapt at Lilith with a fork. "How long?"

"I'm surprised he's still alive." Lilith brings her hands down on top of her stomach. "You can go down and see him."

Angel pushes out her chair but stops, putting one hand over Maya's. "Should I?"

She shrugs, stuffing another mouthful of soft crumbling cake into her mouth. "It's your choice."

Lilith winks at Maya, shameless and relaxed. Angel wonders how much eridium she's pilfered while they've been gone. "So it did work?"

Putting her spoon down, Maya scratches nonchalantly at her neck. "Yeah."

Angel blinks. "You… You plotted this." Spoken only as a suggestive assumption, but from the look on Maya's face she knows it's the truth.

"I decided to play at your game. A little." Maya turns stern. "Not as far as you think."

"That…" Angel smiles, giggles like a child, claps a hand over her mouth. "Oh, that's so…" And she leans forward, kissing Maya's cheek. "You're very sweet."

"I don't want to play games with you."

"You did it, though."

"Careful," Lilith says, "she might never want you to stop."

Angel laughs again, flinging her arms around Maya's neck as she clumsily climbs onto Maya's lap, peppering her face with feather-light kisses before tasting the cake on her tongue. She feels as if she's floating, Maya's hands trying to hold her still, carefully skimming along the plates fused to her vertebrae.

The moment she stops kissing Maya, she's going to have to go down and watch her father die.

_Finally_.

The moment she stops kissing Maya, she's going to watch the first twenty years of her life die, and she's going to have to start something new. She's terrified and clings harder, laughing desperately, drawing in as much air as she can through her nose. Her fingers curl in the short buzz at Maya's neck, holding on to the one person that matters.

And the kiss ends, Lilith muttering a '_finally_' under her breath, and Angel prepares to die a little.

Again.

_This is where it ends, dad. This is where we part forever._

* * *

Maya wakes up from her slumber when an arm slides around her waist from behind, a familiar whisper in her ear – like the one that greeted her welcome to Pandora, that called Sanctuary her home, the voice that guided her across a continent and through dangers untold. "Thank you for killing my dad."

And Maya, tired and comfortable, doesn't know if it's a genuine thing or not, but it _feels_ genuine. As if she cares. As if she's actually pleased by what's been ruined.

She rolls around and faces Angel, who reeks of blood and something sharper, even more familiar. Her sleepy brain takes a few moments to put the pieces together. "Do you feel better?"

"Not in the least." She grins, her teeth glimmering as they catch the light from a lamp. "I should leave."

"Why?" Maya hooks a finger in the loose lining of Angel's pants. "Stay."

"The more I look at you, the more I want to hurt you. It's a genetic flaw."

"Stay." She presses her body against Angel's, feeling the sticky warm blood smeared onto her abs by Angel's wandering fingers.

"I'll keep watch," Angel says, reassuring, sounding like she's leaving even when she hooks a leg over Maya. "But I can't stay here. I need to survive. I need to…"

"I know, and I'm still going to ask you to stay." She smiles against Angel's neck. "Leave when I'm asleep. It'll hurt."

In the morning, Maya has dried blood on her chest and thighs, there's a dead man in the basement and one half of her bed is crumpled and cold. But in her ear, there's a whisper – the voice of Pandora – and on her retinas, a pair of blue eyes flicker, a sweet smile flashing by.


End file.
